The Monterey Bay Aquarium More Than A Fancy Trip Undersea

MONTEREY, CALIF. — Only a few years ago, chocolate-chip cookies seemed to provide the formula for urban liveliness. Now, communities lure the tourist dollar with sharks.

Boston did it. Baltimore did it. Camden, N.J., is planning to do it. The aquarium is the hot tourist attraction of our time, and if current trends continue, there will be Jaws-under-glass for all.

The Baltimore Aquarium, designed by Cambridge Seven Associates, probably represents the state of the art. It has more than a passing resemblance to a Disney amusement ride. Illumination comes from the tanks themselves, and visitors are drawn from display to display, until the experience culminates with a walk through the large shark tank.

There is something hypnotic about the experience, which derives primarily from the way in which the fish move through the water and the way in which both the fish and the visitors are lit.

Aquariums are, by their nature, unnatural. Their aim is to teach about what goes on underwater and to put on a good show. But when the show is too good, too slick, it makes me uneasy. Understanding demands challenge and activity, but it is too easy to slide through the aquarium experience.

All of this is prologue to a description of a different kind of place, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, designed by the San Francisco architecture firm of Esherick, Homsley, Dodge and Davis. The aquarium stands on a pier that juts into Monterey Bay and is concerned with the life in the ocean nearby. And it is a special piece of ocean; it includes the Monterey Canyon, an undersea feature the size of the Grand Canyon, which harbors a tremendous array of creatures and environments.

Many people will probably find this a much less satisfying place than Baltimore. It follows an opposite approach in nearly every respect. The exterior of Baltimore's aquarium is a saillike sculptural presence that provides the focal point of the whole Inner Harbor development. The Monterey Bay Aquarium tries quite successfully to disappear into its surroundings along Cannery Row.

The Baltimore Aquarium prescribes a path for the visitor; the Monterey allows milling around and, to some extent, requires it. Despite its waterfront location, the Baltimore Aquarium is self-contained. The Monterey encourages visitors to connect what they see in the tanks, and in the aviary, with what is living in the sea just offshore or just underneath the building itself.

Parts of the interior, with its pumps, large tanks, concrete floors and salty smell, reminded me of the fish market my uncle used to own. This is quite a personal association, to be sure, but it is not an inappropriate one. Most people relate to fish in only one way; they eat them. Aquariums that set up the sharks as the climactic event are playing off the visitors' fear that they will be eaten, which is unlikely. It's a man-eat-fish world we're living in.

Before Monterey's livelihood was based on tourists, it rested on catching fish. John Steinbeck's novels about the canneries help draw visitors even now; across the street from the aquarium is La Ida Cafe, which proclaims on its front window that it is Steinbeck's ''famous place of ill repute.'' The aquarium tries to deal with the history of the canneries, both by preserving some of the cannery machinery and by showing displays and videotapes.

The original idea was to put the aquarium into a renovated cannery, something that quickly proved impractical. Instead, the building partakes of the seemingly improvisatory spirit in which the canneries themselves were built.

Likewise, the aquarium appears as a set of small building parts. They are put together more artfully than in the original canneries, perhaps, but the care does not assert itself. Indeed, its high metal smokestack and the sardine-advertising panels on the side provide a camouflage almost as effective as that of the rock perch in some of the tanks. Conceptually, it seems a little silly to make an aquarium look like a cannery, but in the haphazard, genially phony touristic midway that is Cannery Row, it turns out all right.

Inside, the star attractions are two tanks; one simulates an undersea forest of kelp, and the other shows the life of a deep reef. Some people stand at the windows to savor the experience of an entirely different environment. Others like to be scared by the sharks. And still others peer in at the salmon and red snapper and dream of dinner.

Around the sides are smaller tanks, which make specific points or highlight particular animals. This is a very didactic place, but it does not force everyone to pay attention to the same lesson.

The light levels here are higher than at many other aquariums, and the spaces between attractions are larger. It is a cold concrete building, as is appropriate for its setting. But it is made with great care and incorporates some subtle touches, such as the kelp forms that are cast into some of the walls.

The building beckons visitors onto balconies where, if they are lucky, they can catch a glimpse of a sea lion. This is more than another good aquarium; it is another good kind of aquarium, one that offers an alternative model to those places that are fishing for tourists.